


The Legend of Sleepy Glasses

by Major



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Changing Feelings, Crushes, Humor, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 05:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16212683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Major/pseuds/Major
Summary: Schmitt and Nico have a drink at Joe's after watching Roy get fired.





	The Legend of Sleepy Glasses

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place directly after 15x03. I wanted to see a reaction to what happened with Roy between these two.

“You mind?”

Schmitt looked up from the table at Joe’s Bar where he was sitting alone.  His eyes darted from Dr. Kim to the extra drink in his hand.  This was becoming a habit.

“I feel like I started a tab with you without realizing it,” he said, and Nico took a seat across from him.  He set the beer down and pushed it over.

“Not a tab.”

“So you just have a sixth sense for when people really need a beer?”

Nico glanced at the bar where Roy was being comforted by Parker and Helm.  “Feeling bad for your friend?”

“Yes,” Schmitt said too quickly.

The truth was, he did feel bad for Roy.  Watching Karev crush him in the locker room when he fired him was brutal.  It felt like he’d been thrust in the front row of a boxing match, close enough to feel the floor vibrate when Roy got KO’d.  They were competitive but still friends at the end of the day.  Seeing that happen to Roy was awful, but that wasn’t all of it; might not have even been most of it.

“But?” Nico encouraged him, curious.  “There’s something else bothering you, right?”

Schmitt wanted to pretend he didn’t know what he meant, but he did because sympathy for Roy wasn’t the whole source of his panic; panic that he figured was written all over his face since he could lose a poker game playing at the kids’ table.  He had a way of emoting without his consent.

“It’s just…”  Schmitt dropped his elbows on the table and leaned forward, struggling on whether to admit what was bothering him but caving at Nico’s patient, expectant look.  With a couple quick, furtive looks over at Roy, he tried to keep his voice down as he hissed, “That’s me!  That career ending bloodbath is my future.  I’m a time bomb!”

Nico twisted the cap off of his beer and pushed it to him once more.  Schmitt shifted in his seat, nervous for his prospects and guilty at his selfishness in the face of Roy’s trouble, and took a long swig.  He felt pretty far from chill, but maybe it would cool his panic before it sent him barreling into disaster.

“I don’t see a timer on you.”

“You don’t need to see it.  I feel it!  It’s—Okay.  You don’t know me.”  He broke off with canned laughter.  “I am epic, but not in a good way.  I’m the guy that plucks the wrong can of peas from the pyramid display at the grocery store and makes the whole stack avalanche.  I faint at blood.  And I drop my glasses inside people!  That is not a metaphor.”

Nico winced, but his eyes were bright.  “Yeah.  I heard that story.  You’re kind of a legend, man.”

Schmitt threw his hands up.  “See!  I’m legendary, but not the good kind.  I’m not an Ellis Grey legend.  I’m the legend of Sleepy Hollow; only, I’m the guy that gets his head chopped off.”

Nico laughed, and Schmitt tried to be offended but couldn’t resist the pull to follow suit.  He adjusted his glasses with a self-deprecating shrug.

“I’m doomed, is all I’m saying.”

Nico assessed him over his beer as he drank and set it down with a contemplative pause.  “Maybe,” he agreed but leaned forward and dropped his eyes in thought.  “Or maybe you’ll surprise yourself.  And if not.  You work at a hospital.”  He met his gaze with a smirk and shrugged.  “You could probably find somebody to reattach the head.”

Schmitt rubbed his face to hide his smile and ignored the new but comfortable flip in his stomach when he met his eyes again.  He bought him drinks and made him laugh when he was miserable and took off his shirt to shower in his vicinity when he had his own lounge.  Nico’s hair was still damp, and Schmitt had to chug his beer to keep from dwelling on the cut of his abs that were burned in his memory.  He was doomed enough as it was without letting himself focus on what that meant.

“Don’t I—Don’t I owe you a drink?” he offered to distract himself from Nico’s amazing body and distract Nico from noticing that he’d noticed.  “Next round on me?”

He looked surprised but pleasantly so.  “Yeah.”

Schmitt stood to go to the bar, but Nico laid a hand over the one he had on the table before he could walk away.  The contact sent a charge through him.  The beer hadn’t calmed him, but the soft pressure of his grasp reached something inside Schmitt too deep for alcohol to soothe.  It awakened a stillness in him that navigated through his buzz and panic and quieted all the noise.

There was an earnestness to his reassurance when Nico said, “You’re not doomed, Schmitt.  You still have plenty of time to change your legend.  But, to be honest, it’s pretty cool as it is, dude.  You saved someone’s life by giving blood _during_ surgery.  Might not make it in a textbook, but—”  He smiled at him, and the calm that settled over Schmitt was way better than an alcohol-induced haze.  “—I’d tell it around a campfire.”

His body made the confusing decision to not only slow down his automatic responses and make him aware of every breath but to zero in on the gentle pressure of Nico’s touch.  That must have been how Thing, the disembodied hand from the Addams Family felt, because awareness of anything else pretty much dropped to nothing.

The bar felt far away and his voice very quiet inside the hollow they were in, “Uh, thanks.”

Nico let go of his hand like he hadn’t pushed heat into him that lingered in his hold’s absence and went back to his beer like Schmitt hadn’t already lost his head at something as small as his fingers around his.

“Yep,” Schmitt mumbled to himself as he trudged to the bar.  “I’m doomed.”


End file.
